The crypt nobody knew was there

For as long as anyone could remember, historians assumed that Exeter cathedral had been built without a crypt at all, the theory being that its sandy, marshy ground simply couldn't support one. It was one of those quiet architectural facts nobody thought to question.

Then recent excavations proved it wrong. Archaeologists working beneath the cathedral floor found a hidden medieval crypt that nobody alive knew existed, believed to hold the tomb of a nephew of William the Conqueror. It had been sitting there, completely unnoticed, for the better part of nine hundred years, underneath a building people had been visiting, praying in and studying for centuries.

I painted the cathedral in watercolour and ink, that pale Gothic front against Devon sky. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Exeter Cathedral, Devon · Travel Poster